


Long and Short; the difference of two brothers

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Con Artists, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 00:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is the Holmes brother known for his ability to con people, but what no one realises is that while Sherlock might be able to pull off short cons, Mycroft's whole life is one long con.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long and Short; the difference of two brothers

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a response to the prompt: [Once upon a time, Mycroft was a con man. It goes without saying, he was very good.](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/14370.html?thread=77019938#t77019938)

Growing up, Sherlock was known for his ability to sham. His family, their friends, neighbours, and teachers learned quickly not to trust big grey eyes, crocodile tears and the nearly sickly sweet voice Sherlock could produce at an instant’s notice. It was not that he wasn’t any good at his ability to inhabit personas when they suited; it was just that he could not see the point in keeping up the facade once he had achieved what he wanted (or, as was more often the case as his reputation grew, was categorically denied access to the fire axe, Susan’s pet turtle, Mummy’s silk stockings, Father’s tobacco, or whatever else it was he was after). Strangers and distracted adults frequently found themselves revealing secrets or relieving themselves of various goods and services to the rather winsome child and experiencing a sort of emotional whiplash when suddenly faced with mockery, arrogance and enumerations of their faults and failures immediately after.

Occasionally, when Sherlock had extracted some particularly sensitive piece of information, or very expensive piece of equipment, or simply managed to be excessively offensive, complaints would be made to his parents. Mr and Mrs Holmes, or Father and Mummy as Sherlock knew them, had long since given up on trying to rein in their brilliant but wild son. Sherlock was utterly resistant to all forms of correction. And so Father would do his best to smooth over the slight or pay for any damages and Mummy would sigh and ask the universe why Sherlock couldn’t be more like his older brother, Mycroft.

Of course, this was the ultimate irony for where Sherlock was infamous for his short cons, Mycroft was managing to run a con to last his lifetime: that he was the trustworthy, dependable and honest Holmes brother. Mycroft found this generally held opinion to be rather delicious. Surely any idiot claiming possession of half a brain cell could recognise that Sherlock, with his brash untactful ways, was a completely open book. Anyone and everyone knew where they stood with Sherlock, he made sure of it, loudly if need be. In contrast, Mycroft made a point to keep all and sundry in the dark about his true intentions, irrespective of how important the issue was. From coffee orders, to girlfriends; from books read to discovering the affair Father was having with the maid, Mycroft made all decisions based on carefully planned calculations. Unlike Sherlock, Mycroft was always willing to compromise and sacrifice in the short term, knowing full well how delicate and beautiful the game he was playing.

In school, Mycroft rarely used his ability to engineer the world to his advantage. Certainly never in an academic context, he had enough Holmesian brilliance to be able to achieve the precise grades he wanted without needing external help. In the playground, Mycroft manoeuvred himself to a comfortable middle rung in the social hierarchy. He didn’t desire popularity or infamy; to fit in or stand out were both undesirable in their extreme forms, utterly useless to Mycroft’s purposes. Although he might occasionally instigate the spread of useful rumours, starting fights and ending friendships, or at times ensure the successful starts of romances and position certain students to win particular awards, for the most part, Mycroft was content to sit back and keep a loose hold on the strings that he used to control his world.

It was not until he started at university that Mycroft started to use his abilities for rather more tangible results. Mycroft had long been aware that money was a very useful tool to have at his disposal, and that relying on his parents for it would always give them a degree of control over his life that he could not escape. The image of this tie to his family was not undesirable, and certainly Mycroft had no intention to damage this illusion of familial loyalty and dependence. Instead, he would simply start to procure his own funds illicitly and tuck them away for future use.

The first person Mycroft Holmes conned out of his money was always going to be the riskiest. As much as Mycroft could plan and theorise and predict, practical implementations always came with the unavoidable risk factor introduced by that rather pesky forces of free will and human unpredictability. Once he had practical experience to draw upon, Mycroft would be able to compensate more accurately for these inconvenient factors and take on more ambitious projects. The mark he selected met the qualities of an easy mark, excessively wealthy, gullible, greedy, egotistical, et cetera, and the con was uncomplicated and able to be performed in such a way that Mycroft could retain a degree of anonymity. Keeping himself in a place where he was technically on the radar but utterly overlooked when he needed to be was of the utmost importance to Mycroft and nothing, certainly not something as mundane as money, was allowed to disrupt this state of affairs.

All of this worrying and planning and making of contingency plans proved unnecessary as the con went brilliantly.

He received such a thrill when he counted out the several hundred pounds worth of notes that, for the first time in his life, Mycroft found he could not control his visible bodily reactions. His breath rushed in and out of his mouth with little huffs of near-laughter, his cheeks flushed pink with excitement, and if you looked very carefully, the corners of his eyes gleamed from the small tears threatening to form. Thankfully, all of this could easily be explained by an enjoyable brisk walk in a crisp breeze or the decision to take the stairs and finding a pound coin just as the decision was beginning to be regretted. Still, if Mycroft wasn’t feeling utterly unbridled joy for the first time in his life, he would have been rather concerned by this loss of control, and made a mental note to adjust his persona slightly so that it would appear he was a man who eschewed any tasks involving ‘legwork’. He was not a man about to invite trouble.

The con work was heady and almost addictive. Mycroft found himself planning new, more complex cons, or even just reliving old successes when ostensibly he was listening attentively to lectures (or cultivating a network under the guise of ‘friendship’ or keeping up his image by attending to a romantic paramour or whoever else he was required to pay attention to) and in actuality ought to have been considering more long-term goals. Still, Mycroft could not have gotten himself where he had without an ironclad grip on his self-control and so he timetabled an indulgent week to enjoy these exploits, before he ruthlessly directed his attentions elsewhere, and limited the amount of time he spent thinking on con work to the absolute bare minimum required for success.

In this line of work, Mycroft managed to earn enough money to repay his parents several times over (though of course he never would, family image and relations were important), keep his wayward younger brother out of mischief and generally reassure Mycroft that his ability to rule the world was not going to be hampered by a lack of funds.

As the years progressed, Mycroft’s love of confidence tricks did not dim, even as he had increasingly and absurdly complicated political machinations to occupy himself with, and it was the one indulgence he allowed himself, restricting the pleasure to celebrate large victories and special occasions. Such is the nature of siblings, that Mycroft received a slightly vicious pleasure in knowing that Sherlock had no idea of Mycroft’s rather unusual hobby. Due to the hideous nature of fate or some other force as yet not under Mycroft’s control, one of Mycroft’s marks once ended up entangled up in one of Sherlock’s murders, and though relevant to solving the case, Sherlock was utterly stumped by both the identity and the techniques of the confidence trickster, and had to solve the case in a rather roundabout sort of way. It was rather delightful.

Mycroft didn’t bother to hide the way he would manipulate Sherlock, and later his flatmate John, into doing busywork for him. It was of course not particularly useful to Mycroft to have Sherlock in the dark about his manipulative skills, but more importantly to Mycroft, it provided a safety net in the event that something unaccountable happened and things went wrong. Unfortunately Mycroft’s ability to direct providence was still limited, and so he needed to be prepared for such an outcome. Overtly manipulating his brother was not only enjoyable, but also expedient. Sherlock, who was unable to keep up a short con for more than a few minutes and was exhausted by the thought of Mycroft’s mid-length manipulations, would be utterly unable to fathom a life-long con and so should something happen, only the first layer of Mycroft’s manoeuvring would be revealed and blamed, and no one would ever be any the wiser about the true state of affairs. Just as it should be.


End file.
